Democrats' closed-door meeting shows open government in Florida has no champion | Editorial

By Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board

Apr 25, 2019 | 2:20 PM

A closed-door meeting by House Democrats — in violation of the state Sunshine Law — is more evidence that neither party is committed to protecting Florida's open government laws.

Lawmakers’ contempt for Florida’s Sunshine Law was on full display late Wednesday night.

Reporters for the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald began tweeting that House Democratic lawmakers were meeting behind closed doors, ostensibly to discuss electing the party’s leadership. While we would prefer such discussions were held in the open, the law doesn’t require it. That’s what Democrats said they were talking about in private.

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Not true. The reporters — the Sentinel’s Gray Rohrer and the Herald’s Elizabeth Koh — discovered lawmakers were talking about the state budget and other bills in violation of the state’s open meetings law. Once the tweeting began, the doors suddenly opened and the reporters were welcomed into the meeting.

A couple of lessons are important here: Democrats fancy themselves as occupying the moral high ground. And sometimes they do. But as Wednesday’s episode demonstrated, when it comes to open government and respecting the Sunshine Law, they’re just as bad as the state’s Republicans.

Every year Democrats happily join Republicans in the rush to create new exemptions to the Sunshine Law, even though this is one area where Democrats could make a difference, even as the perpetual minority party. Florida’s Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate to create new exemptions for public records or open meetings. If Democrats chose to, they could stop any new exemption in its tracks.

For example, this year’s bipartisan effort to restrict information includes a bill that expands the definition of home addresses for those who already are able to have that information withheld.

Under the new law (SB 248), a home address means “the physical address, mailing address, street address, parcel identification number, plot identification number, legal property description, neighborhood name and lot number, GPS coordinates, and any other descriptive property information that may reveal the home address.”

The First Amendment Foundation is appalled. In a letter urging Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto the bill, the foundation’s Barbara Petersen wrote, “This information is of critical importance to the business community, particularly title companies and realtors….Property records are not only public records; property records are also official records and an exemption of this magnitude is simply unwarranted.”

How did this sweeping new exemption come to pass? Through a unanimous vote of the House and a 39-1 vote in the Senate. (We salute that lone voice for open government — Democratic Sen. Lori Berman of Boynton Beach.)

The new address exemptions apply to an existing and stunningly long list of current and former positions: police officers, corrections officers, firefighters, code enforcement officers, judges, investigators, probation officers, public defenders, state attorneys, EMTs and paramedics, nurses at certain facilities, human resource and labor relations directors, even elected tax collectors.

Another bill to cloak university presidential and provost searches in secrecy passed a House committee last week by a 14-3 vote. Another bill sailing through the House would automatically seal criminal records of those who are arrested but not convicted, which sounds OK until you consider someone with a lengthy arrest record but no convictions might be applying to become a nanny for your child.

If, like Republicans, Democrats feel no passion for open government, that’s how you get secret meetings that violate the Sunshine Law.

Democratic leaders wave off the incident as a misunderstanding, and that once they realized the press wasn’t in the room they opened the door. Alternatively, lawmakers in the room might have noticed the tweets and realized they had been busted by diligent reporters.

Either way, Wednesday’s events illustrate these are dangerous times for open government in Florida, and that in this instance neither party can claim the high ground.